JoomSchool - Accounting Reports

The accounting subsystem turns the payments you record and the expenses you log into a financial overview of the school. This article covers Income reports, Expense management, the Accounting dashboard with its income-vs-expense chart, and the monthly breakdown views.

Overview

JoomSchool's accounting is two-sided: Income comes from Payments (the fees you collect from students and parents), Expenses are anything the school spends money on (salaries, utilities, supplies, repairs). Both feed the same dashboard, so you can see the school's net position month by month and year by year.

The relevant admin views are:

• Accounting — the dashboard. A line chart of Income vs Expense for the current year, plus year-to-date totals and the school's contact block.
• Income — the list of all incoming payments grouped by pay type, with year and month filtering.
• Income Month — a month-by-month breakdown of income.
• Expenses — the master list of recorded expenses.
• Expenses Month — a month-by-month breakdown of expenses.
• Expense Category — the categories you organise expenses under.

Prerequisites

• Payments are being recorded in Components → JoomSchool → Payments. Their status determines whether they count toward income (Paid records do; Pending, Cancel and Under Review records don't until they're updated).
• The currency is configured in Components → JoomSchool → Options → Payment so totals display correctly.

The Accounting dashboard

Components → JoomSchool → Accounting opens the dashboard. It shows:

• Total Income for the current year — the sum of all paid payments stamped for this year.
• Total Expense for the current year — the sum of all expense records stamped for this year.
• A line chart comparing Income vs Expense month by month. Two coloured lines move across the year so you can see at a glance when income outpaced spending and vice-versa.
• The school header block (name, address, phone, email, website) — these come from Components → JoomSchool → Options → Setting.

The dashboard always shows the calendar year, not the academic year — accounting periods are typically January-December even when the academic year is split differently.

The chart

The chart is rendered using a Google Visualization (Charts) script, so it requires an internet connection on the device viewing it. If your computer is offline, the dashboard area where the chart should appear stays blank — switch to one of the list views to see the underlying numbers.

Recording income

Income is not recorded directly in the accounting views. It flows automatically from Components → JoomSchool → Payments: every Payment whose Status is Paid counts toward income for the month and year stamped on the payment record.

If a payment isn't appearing in income totals, check:

• The payment's Status is Paid (not Pending, Cancel, Under Review or Unpaid).
• The payment's Year and Month fields are correct.
• The toolbar Year Switcher (if applicable) is showing the matching year.

The Income view

Components → JoomSchool → Accounting → Income (or directly from the Accounting dashboard's Income link) shows every paid payment as a row, with columns for the student, the pay type, the amount and the date.

Filters at the top let you narrow down by:

• Year
• Month
• Pay Type
• Class

Use these to answer questions like "How much did Class 6 contribute in tuition fees in March 2025?".

The toolbar offers PDF and Print options for exporting the filtered list. The school header / footer is included.

The Income Month view

Components → JoomSchool → Accounting → Income Month (depending on the menu, sometimes labelled "Income Monthly Report") presents the same data summarised by month. Each row is a month with a single total. This is the view you reconcile against the school's bank deposits.

The Expenses view

Components → JoomSchool → Accounting → Expenses (the master list of all expense records).

Recording an expense

1. Click New.
2. Fill in:

1. Click Save & Close.

The expense appears in the Expenses list and in the dashboard's totals immediately.

Expense Categories

Components → JoomSchool → Accounting → Expense Category (or via the Accounting sidebar). Defines the categories used in the Expense form.

Common categories: Salaries, Utilities, Maintenance, Stationery, Transport, Repairs, Events. The default install does not seed expense categories — you create the ones your school uses.

Adding a category

1. Click New.
2. Fill in Name (required, e.g. "Utilities").
3. Click Save & Close.

Edit a category later by clicking its row. Be cautious about renaming — every existing expense linked to it will silently change category in retrospective reports.

The Expenses Month view

The mirror of Income Month, listing total expenses month by month. The reconciliation pattern is the same: compare to bank statements and supporting receipts each month.

Expenses yearly view

The Expenses list also has a Yearly layout (accessed via the toolbar) which groups expenses by year and sub-totals each year. Useful when you want a multi-year history without filtering month-by-month.

Filtering and reporting workflow

For a typical month-end close:

1. Open Components → JoomSchool → Payments and confirm every Pending payment from last month has been resolved (collected, cancelled, or moved to next month).
2. Open the Income Month view, take a screenshot or PDF of the month's total, and reconcile against the bank.
3. Open the Expenses list, filter to the month, and confirm every payable bill is recorded.
4. Open the Expenses Month view; PDF the month's expenses for the file.
5. Open the Accounting dashboard; the chart should show the new month's data.

Tips & Best Practices

• Update payment statuses promptly. A pending payment that's actually paid skews the dashboard until the status is corrected.
• Reconcile monthly, not annually. Errors that are caught the same month are easy to fix; errors caught a year later require painful detective work.
• Define a small number of expense categories (10–15 max) and stick to them. The dashboard breaks down by category, and a sprawling list of categories makes the breakdown unreadable.
• Capture vendor/invoice references in the Description field. It saves time during audits.
• Export PDFs at month-end and store them as part of the school's accounting records, even if the database is backed up — the PDF is useful for auditors who don't have system access.
• Don't delete expense records. Use Trash if a record is wrong; once it's been included in a printed report, leave the original alone for audit purposes and create a correcting entry.

Troubleshooting